Angola Says Rebels Are Mounting New Attacks, Jeopardizing Pact

By KENNETH B. NOBLE, Special to The New York Times

Published: August 21, 1989

Correction Appended

LUANDA, Angola, Aug. 20—
The guerrilla forces led by Jonas Savimbi have mounted a major offensive here, according to a high Angolan Government official. The offensive, the official indicated, has jeopardized a cease-fire agreement between Angola and the rebels.

More than 200 Angolan Government troops and 300 civilians have been killed during the past month and 600 have been wounded, the official, Foreign Minister Pedro de Castro Van-Denem Loy, said in an interview on Saturday night. No figures on guerrilla casualties were available.

''Unita has launched a major military offensive,'' Mr. Loy said, using the Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, Mr. Savimbi's group.

''The main objective is Luanda and to take Luanda and to take power,'' he said. Rebel Official Denies Reports

The aim of the Angolan Government, he said, ''is by hook or crook to cut off American aid to Unita.''

The Angolan Foreign Minister's remarks appear to signal that the Government in Luanda is reevaluating its strategy in the peace process, which began in Gbadolite, Zaire, on June 22 when the two sides agreed on a cease-fire and peace talks. Angola has made no formal protest. Until now, the Angolan Government's criticisms of Mr, Savimbi and his American-backed guerrilla movement have been relatively restrained.

If the reports about Unita's cease-fire violations are confirmed, they could be politically embarrassing to the United States, which has given Unita at least $15 million a year in aid in the last few years. Talks Resume This Week

This week in Harare, Zimbabwe, African leaders and Foreign Ministers are expected to resume peace talks, the first face-to-face meetings since the cease-fire agreement. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire is the principal mediator at the talks, which are to include Mr. Savimbi and President Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.

Asked whether the Angolan Government contemplated abandoning the peace process in the face of what he calls Unita's renewed attacks, Mr. Loy said, ''We want to keep the cease-fire and the peace objective at any price.''

He also insisted that, so far, Government forces have refrained from taking retaliatory action. He added, ''Of course, we will not give up, and if Unita continues this major offensive, then we will have to respond.''

''We have evidence,'' he said, ''that their orders are to intensify military attacks against the population.'' Conflicting Accounts

During the interview at the presidential compound here, Mr. Loy also asserted that Unita forces last month shot down a chartered airplane carrying mostly civilian Government officials. According to news reports here, 43 passengers were killed, and there were five survivors. Last Friday, Mr. Loy said, six Cuban troops were ambushed and killed near the Benguela railroad, which runs east and west through the middle of the country.

Responding to the reports on the shooting down of the plane, Mr. Fernandes, the Unita official, said that according to the guerrilla group's intelligence report the Angolan aircraft was shot down by Angolan Government forces, not Unita. The downing of the aircraft was a ''mistake'' he said, that the Angolan Government is ''too embarrassed to admit.''

It was impossible to verify either account in Luanda, Angola's capital. But several Western diplomats, business leaders and aid workers who have recently traveled in the southern provinces said they had seen evidence of recent Unita attacks. Attacks in Provinces

The attacks are said to have occurred mainly in the provinces of Huambo, Benguela and Bie.

The cease-fire accord, many details of which remain to be worked out, was reached in June at a meeting in Gbadolite, Zaire, between President dos Santos of Angola and the rebel leader Savimbi. The meeting was the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders in their 14-year-old civil war.

Mr. Savimbi's group has been fighting the Marxist Government since it came to power soon after Portugal granted its Angolan colony independence in 1975. The Government is led by another faction that fought the Portuguese, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which was largely supported during its insurgency by the Soviet Union and has been backed in recent years by tens of thousands of Cuban troops. Refusing to Go Into Exile

Implicit in the Gbadolite agreement, Angolan Government officials here say, is the assumption that Mr. Savimbi would accept some form of exile - either internal or external -during a period of national reconciliation. Since the Gbadolite meeting, however, Mr. Savimibi has said repeatedly that he will not go into exile.

Mr. Loy said that Mr. Savimbi appears determined to press for military victory, despite African and American appeals for a negotiated settlement. ''Savimbi is such an ambitious person and the only thing that interests him is power, and by any means he must take power,'' Mr. Loy said.

map of Luanda, Angola

Correction: August 28, 1989, Monday, Late Edition - Final An article last Monday about reports of a rebel offensive in Angola misidentified the Angolan Foreign Minister. He is Pedro de Castro Van-Dunem; Loy is his nickname.